Comments on: Haiti Cholera Toll: Stricken – 11,000, Dead – 750+

By: rmw

rmw — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:13:42 +0000

I’m reminded of one of those right-winger viral emails a relative sent me. It said (and I’m paraphrasing, since I deleted it): “How can we [the US] let children go hungry, vets be homeless, the elderly not get needed medication, etc., but send aid to Haiti?” Well, the blatant racism and isolationism aside (“Why are we spending tax dollars to help black foreigners?)”, the upshot is this: in the US, yes there are malnourished children and homeless vets, but we have the ability to fix that. We lack the political will to do so (that would be socialism, you know). Haiti lacks that ability, due to social, political, and physical infrastructure (or lack thereof). See the difference? (For your average tea-bagger, probably not.)

(As an aside, I wonder how eager the tea-baggers would be to give money to help hungry children, or homeless vets, or disabled elderly if they weren’t lily-white…)

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:37:10 +0000

It would be nice if population could be controlled by birth control but such efforts have historically, China being the limited exception, failures.

That is actually a terribly inaccurate statement, in practice. Yes, showing up and saying (without the Cultural Revolution’s left over infrastructure including the Red Army) that everyone will now have fewer babies does not work well, but the Demographic Transition does. Wherever health care is provided universally and at reasonable cost and with reasonable effectiveness, girls are educated and not just boys, along with a mixture of job opportunities provided and not just slave factory labor or picking cotton, fertility plummets.

But that would involve wrenching some of that wealth out of the hands of the … well, the wealthy.

Art, there is a calculus but the key variables are off limits because the wealthy want to keep every bloody dime, or at least, enough of them do that they manage to control the politics. The very things you mention, having to do with the US economy (leading to less helping overseas) are the direct result of the concentration of too much wealth in too few hands.

There is only one problem, and it is easy to see how to fix it, yet made almost impossible to do so.

By: Art

Art — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 23:54:09 +0000

In strictly amoral terms falling wages and to many people chasing too few job in the US, mass unemployment and youth disillusionment that leads to terrorism in the middle east, and many of the problems within Haiti, are seemingly signs that there are too many people for the environment.

It would be nice if population could be controlled by birth control but such efforts have historically, China being the limited exception, failures. Given the ineffectiveness of birth control as a policy external forces are free to come to bear.

What is the best way to die? Is cholera worse than civil war or insurrection. Is slow weakening and succumbing to opportunistic infections better, or worse, than being blown up by a suicide bomber, or being a suicide bomber. Is being born into an all too crowded society rife with disease and conflict a blessing or a curse? Is it better to die early from a disease, or make it through to adulthood, and watch your children die?

I’m not telling anyone to let them die, or not, the default is to save those we can and think deeply about it later, but we are well into a calculus that is not well defined.

By: gwen

gwen — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 07:19:03 +0000

I don’t understand why they can’t at least get cheap filters there and teach them how to use it. Cholera is a horrid way to die. Who is responsible for apportioning and planning where the aid monies go. Cholera, typhoid and typhus can always be counted on to join a misery party. Don’t they know that??

By: Lynn Wilhelm

Lynn Wilhelm — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 03:57:52 +0000

I heard something disturbing on NPR today (might have actually been BBc’s The World). Now, I didn’t hear the whole report, so maybe someone can add to this.
Apparently, there are people in Haiti that don’t know how cholera is spread. They think it’s bad air. An interviewed woman and her family were described having toothpaste on their upper lips to prevent transmission.

I once heard that when people in rural Africa were told about how parasites in water caused illnesses (really taught how it worked) and how filtering the water would get rid of the parasite, they were happy to do the filtering.

I hope someone is straightforwardly working to educate people in Haiti about how to stay safe (hopefully, that’s possible). I’ll check out all those groups.

Thanks for posting this Greg.